The Rest is Silence
by ffvogt
Summary: The pillow next to him and the beaten-up sheets proved that someone else was there last night. In the time that was dilating endlessly towards the inertia, he looked around. By now, the invisible metronome should have started ticking in his head, but all he got was silence [...] a perfect silence: immense and impermeable. [HARRY/LANCELOT(Jack Davenport)]


**THE REST IS SILENCE **

Setting: the evening before the beginning of Lancelot's failed mission.

Disclaimer: Kingsman and its characters do not belong to me.

* * *

**THE REST IS SILENCE**

The downpour had turned the stone pavements of London into mirrors that reflected the metropolis in the manner of impressionist paintings, perturbed continuously by the heavy steps of those who swarmed the city. Lancelot always thought: they are the_ blood_, and the streets are the veins. Since he was a child, London had always been for him a giant creature whose blood-pumping organ could be found somewhere in one of its seven heads… In its very belly, time is distorted, disfigured, dilated as the languages break into fragmented noises. He cut through the hoards: silent, _detached_.

The street clocks read one a.m. in the morning.

If he were to visit Harry at this time of the day, he would surely find the older man at his piano, playing Bach. It was always Bach, played to perfection, following the beats of an imaginary metronome. As expected. He waited some time behind the door then knocked at the end of the piece.

* * *

"I still sensed that invisible metronome," he told Harry at the door.

"It is my side of the _Verklärung_," he said cynically, referring to Lancelot's beloved Nietzsche. The 'invisible metronome' thing was vulgar and perturbing, yet he kept letting the younger man get away with it.

"Come in."

"There will come the day where the Real becomes the Appearance of Appearances…," Lancelot said calmly.

"I would rather them stay separated," Harry poured some Sovereign 1952 for Lancelot and himself. "Do not launch into your defense of Nietzsche, or Dionysus; none of them interest me," he added dryly.

Lancelot smiled.

"I have known you well enough to know that you won't be listening."

Upstairs, the antique upright Bechstein was open. On the partition stand was the second book of _The Well-Tempered Clavier_, split at the fugue in C-sharp minor. Lancelot knew very well how the partitions were arranged, on the top of the piano and on the Henri IV-style ebony cupboard next to it…

"Can you play something that isn't Bach?" Lancelot sat down in the sofa just next to the piano. "Something that isn't quite you?" he added a short while later.

Harry sat still in front of the piano, as if he had heard nothing. There was quite a long time until he launched into Chopin's first ballade.

* * *

Sure, Harry played beautifully. But all Lancelot could hear was that invisible metronome that kept ticking. All he wanted was to listen to Harry playing the piano without being interrupted by that cursed thing. Once, Harry did play the ballade the way it was intended to be played (was it some ten, twelve years ago?) Unfortunately, it was a unique happening. After that day, Harry gradually turned into a machine: a transformation which he, at present, had achieved.

"You know," Lancelot told the older man one day. "There is Order, of course, but there is Dionysus as well. In case where one malfunctions, the other one becomes amputated."

"It is because I am never on the proud side, James," and by that, Harry meant Lancelot's love for Nietzsche, Wagner, and Mahler. "Dionysus is just a reason for those who need to lash out some thundering scream, under the mask of 'enchantment', proclaiming that they are some superior being who knows how to stare the reality in the eyes. I am sorry to disappoint you, but they remain as weak as they have always been afraid to be."

Harry finished the fast coda without a single mistake.

_Besides, in such Perfection, in that very illusion of it, there is no place for the Will. We become passive, because there's nothing left. The wisdom comes from the redemption of the imperfection, the inversion of it…_

"I said 'something that isn't quite you'," Lancelot said with a smile.

Harry said nothing in response.

"You are always _counting_, Harry, always searching redemptions… But all you want, really, is to forget that invisible metronome: really, it never stops _ticking_ in your head. Have you forgotten that time never stops, just like the invisible metronome? It is a river whose water never passes us a second time. It carries out the remnants until the day they disappear completely. No matter how hard we try to catch up with the flow, we will never win. The world, Harry, will never pass into the Mirror. We can _feel_ and _think_ that we are expanding, reaching the level of some divine being far nobler than us, but we are just getting closer to the limits of the Will, because we, unlike our Will, are not pure substances. _The madness is within the reach of intelligence, like the sickness, of the body_, as said the great Hippolyte Taine. There is nothing we can do, Harry, against the invisible metronome. All we can do, all we _need_ to do, Harry, is to sleep."

Harry said nothing in response. There was a long stretch of silence, which would easily pass into a dream, were it not for the downpour outside.

"I need it."

"Then sleep."

* * *

Lancelot stood up from the sofa then approached Harry at the piano. The older man, as always, stared at him with his severe eyes. Lancelot was struck by pity, not because of how dead Harry's eyes looked, but because he thought how much Harry must have had suffered, trying to live with such void. Some people do born with strong will, Lancelot thought, that they would rather see themselves turning into empty shells when they know that they have failed rising into the line of divinity… With the same pity, he bent down, took Harry's face in his hands then kissed his lips: doubtful and light at first, but as time went, the kiss became more and more assured.

It wasn't sexual desire. Instead, the feeling was closer to that of a proud artist's, upon seeing the beauty of his statue. He, the artist, wanted to become one with the projection of himself. Though, if any, Harry was his negative projection, he always believed that there was this lever that could be pulled to reverse who Harry had become. Lancelot caressed Harry's hair, neck, feeling the realness of his own negative projection. When the kiss ended, he looked at Harry again. The older man's expression was tense, as his eyes were.

"Have you gone mad, James!?"

Lancelot did not answer. He pressed his lips against Harry's again. This time, he was taken by desire. He knew that he had felt it before, this kind of desire, the moment he saw Harry at the concert hall. He unbuttoned Harry's shirt, took it off, and tossed it to the ground. _Harry should learn how to let go, _he thought, imagining how disgusted the older man would feel, seeing the shirt crumpled on the ground like some dead carcass. _Harry should learn how to let go,_ he thought, shoving his willing tongue into the older man's half-opened lips, _and listen to some Wagner. _It was when he took Harry in his arms that the older man pushed him away.

Seeing Harry, who was always so arrogant and dignified, with his hair disheveled, his eyes red, and his cheeks blushed, Lancelot's eyes tinged with pleasure. It is always wonderful seeing the main character falls, accompanied by the blaring music. Verdi did know exactly what he wanted when he marked the fall of Macbeth: and that was that scene which Harry, whom he did not know then, watched with disdain. Lancelot had never forgotten that man since then, and he was really glad when Harry turned out to be one who nominated him to join Kingsman.

"Let go, Harry… Let go. When was the last time you actually slept, or dreamed?" he said amidst his racing breaths. "Yes, tragic, isn't it? Nobody is going to be saved by some _metaphysical_ redemption. Nobody, Harry; you are just defending shadows. Are you sad? Good… It is beautiful, isn't it? There is no ticking metronome in sadness, and in sleep as well… nothing ticks, at least it is how it seems… That damn metronome in your head is always ticking, _Galahad_. Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock; don't you ever get sick of it?"

Harry said nothing. He let the younger man did anything he wanted to his worn body. It was in that exact moment that he realized the crushing weight of the Unspoken that he had always been carrying. _There is Order, of course, but there is Dionysus as well… _But if he had not yet succumbed to the latter, it was because he had always known that he would never be able to carry its weight entirely. He was never the proud one, unlike the young James; he was always rejecting, always refuting, always playing the _sage_. _His_ Lancelot was always the proud one, so proud that the main theme of _Tannhäuser_ will blare out the day he got killed. Harry followed his proud one to the bedroom. He removed his clothes then caressed the beautiful body. Even his physionomy was proud. When he looked up he saw Lancelot's gray eyes. Those ochre stains on the gray iris were beautiful, like sparks of fire dying down in the ashes.

"You are amazing, Harry," Lancelot said with a smile. "If only anyone could be at least one-third as interesting of a Subject as you are, we would probably have the Leibnizian world…"

"You see…, you are just as idealistic as I am," Harry glimpsed at his reflection in the mirror next to the bed, then quickly looked away. He was humiliated by how frail he looked, compared to Lancelot. And how his frail body looked, in the mirror, under Lancelot's hungry kisses, repulsed him even more. "You have always thought that you are daring… that… you dare to confront the Real, but you… are trapped behind the Mirror." Harry wished that he could control his racing breaths, but even those seemed, to him, like detached parts, and soon his body felt to himself a stranger. Every part of himself was reacting, much too honestly, to the younger man's caresses.

He wanted Lancelot.

"We are never meant to go pass it. Nobody ever will," Lancelot brushed Harry's firm thighs with his thin, cold lips, then looked up to meet his eyes. "We are condemned to dream, Harry, always dreaming. As Freud says, we always dream awake."

And then, in Lancelot, the proud artist's desire, which had taken him earlier, returned. He pushed Harry lightly so that the older man was lying on his side, then entered him violently. That was a primitive desire, very singular: unexplainable. _In the beginning was the Desire._ Is it not the substance that links our world and the Mirror? In real and in projection, we are controlled by desire. Intelligence is superficial, no matter how exquisite and intricate it is, and in the end we are primitive, dionysiac beings: we do not think; we only listen to that far-off call. We jump into our roles even before the curtain is lifted at the end of the overture… Outside, the rain had regained its intensity. Lancelot thought: what bliss. His ears were filled by many kinds of sound, and the sound of the downpour was the contrabass, playing a constant rhythm, and Harry's moans, the violins. The movements of their bodies would then complete the symphonic poem. Mahler said: _I do not build symphonies, I build worlds_; the sentence had never struck Lancelot as sharply as that day. He pushed harder and harder, without even noticing that Harry had his hands clenched because of the pain. He had to be one with Harry, he needed to… if not, he would be shot off into the void. He grabbed Harry's hips as he continued thrusting, following the _tempo primitivo_ that rose up from his proper being. Nevertheless, it is always wonderful seeing the main character falls, accompanied by the blaring music.

After Lancelot had come violently inside him, Harry let himself fell to the bed. The downpour was too loud, too noisy… Harry never liked noises: in the end, everything would have to die down… But it was noisy in his head, too. A fugue, in F minor, came into his head, then there was another one, in C-sharp minor, followed by a prelude that came after it, which he did not recognize, then there were other fragments… Amidst the catastrophic noises, Harry tried listening to the metronome in his head, but in the end, it, too, got swallowed by the noises. In the end, all the wanted was to sleep.

"That was something that you have always wanted to do, wasn't it, James?"

Lancelot pulled a blanket over them then took Harry in his arms.

"It all started at the opera," he said calmly. "It was the death of Macbeth. That scene was really beautiful. I started scanning the spectators to see if they had the same reaction, And then I saw you, who were at the first balcony. You were watching the entire scene with disdain, and it made me really angry. I was at the fourth category, right wing, tired having to stand up almost all the time to get a clear view of the stage; and you didn't even appreciate anything. That moment, I thought that it would be nice if it were you who fell, with that kind of music blaring to accompany it."

Harry chuckled.

"Seriously, though, why were you there if it only to judge? Being critical against something like that is as well as being blind."

"It was pride, maybe. Something that your Nietzsche had explained—Can you turn off the lights?"

"Can I ask you something?"

"Say it."

"Why did you choose me, out of all people?" Lancelot turned off the main lamp, the one on the working desk, finishing with the bedside light. "I never had the best notes, never was the fastest one to learn—"

"Sleep, James."

* * *

Did he sleep? If he did, that 'sleep' was close to a void where images and concepts are floating in there, boundless, waiting for Man to decipher something out of darkness. The pale winter sun pierced through his eyelids, waking him up instantly. Half-awake, his ears become more and more sensitive to the phone which had been ringing (since how long?). He answered. Arthur. His voice reached Harry as some distorted, fragmented noises. Then a name rose up from the opaque sea, slicing the surface: Lancelot, Lancelot, _Lancelot_…

"Agent Lancelot had failed his mission."

The pillow next to him and the beaten-up sheets proved that someone else was there last night. In the time that was dilating endlessly towards the inertia, he looked around. By now, the invisible metronome should have started ticking in his head, but all he got was _silence_… No main theme of _Tannhäuser_, nothing: only a perfect silence: immense and impermeable.

* * *

**POSTLUDE**

Kingsman's Lancelot, for me, will always be Jack Davenport.

What I'm trying to do in this little fanfiction is to reconstitute the most important aspect of their relationship, their mutual admiration (and mutual jealousy?). In the film, Harry is really hurt when Arthur, after Lancelot's death, accused him for having not chosen a "more relevant candidate": it confirmed my beforehand assumption that Lancelot is a brilliant agent who got killed out of unluckiness. The bedroom scene, though, is more of an insertion: it's practically impossible to write about those two beautiful men without giving myself some small satisfaction. Nevertheless, I certainly hope that they are not OOC.

On the final note, I would like to thank everyone in advance for reviews, follows, &amp; favorites. It is always a pleasure to get feedback and/or likes.

If there is something you'd like to discuss/ask about this fanfiction, PM me :)


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